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The doors to our houses of worship ought to be open to all. That includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, who often feel that religion has been used to divide and conquer their families and their rights.

On Saturday night at the Saddleback Church forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked both candidates about their definition of marriage, and both said that it was between one man and one woman.

This felt like exclusion, if not discrimination, to many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans. And unfortunately, neither presidential candidate was asked about how they would welcome the LGBT community into the conversations about faith.

That’s too bad because history and progress are often made in the pews. The struggle for civil rights for blacks began largely in our churches — and was led largely by clergy — and was born out of a deep sense of religious conviction, rooted in the tradition of loving thy neighbor as thyself.

Today, however, LGBT Americans struggle to find the same passion for equality within some communities of faith.

As the Anglican Church threatens to divide over the issue of welcoming all seekers of faith, and the Vatican continues to routinely marginalize some of our families, it is becoming clear that some religious communities are eagerly adopting a doctrine of hate.

Too much blood is still being spilled — literally and figuratively — in America’s pews as the struggle for full equality continues.

In July, members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church in Knoxville were victims of a brutal shooting spree sparked by a gunman who targeted the church because of its open and welcoming policies. The Unitarians’ embrace of gay people of faith, the shooter believed, was in direct contradiction to what he believed “faith” was all about. His actions show just how dangerous it can be to perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice in the name of religion.

More churches, synagogues, mosques and temples must make clear that lashing out with violence because of misdirected hate is always wrong.

And more public leaders must insist, in public debates like the one at Saddleback Church, that it is not only acceptable, but expected, that our faith demands we believe in all families.

In 1963, a bombing at a church in Alabama ignited a national crusade that marched from the pews to the streets, to the White House and beyond. America’s religious leaders joined political leaders to change the course of history and change the way we treated our blacks neighbors, friends and loved ones.

In 2008, the shooting in Knoxville should spur our leaders — both religious and political — to do the same.

If faith is going to continue to play a dominant role in the American destiny, it must be the faith of embrace, personified by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and practiced by his followers, not the faith of division that is too often present today.

Real leadership — both moral and political — requires including everyone as part of the conversation, and everyone as part of our American family.

Jody M. Huckaby is executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Huckaby, who holds a degree in psychology, has also been a graduate student of theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Ill. She can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org

By Wendell Berry

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry is a poet, farmer, and environmentalist in Kentucky. This poem, first published in 1973, is reprinted by permission of the author and appears in his “New Collected Poems” (Counterpoint).